Posted
by
Soulskill
on Friday May 09, 2014 @11:22AM
from the your-tax-dollars-at-buffering dept.

An anonymous reader writes "Following the FCC's proposal a couple weeks ago to allow an internet fast lane, a group of activists has come up with a fun counterproposal: force the FCC itself into the slow lane and see how they like it. They write, 'Since the FCC seems to have no problem with this idea, I've (through correspondence) gotten access to the FCC's internal IP block, and throttled all connections from the FCC to 28.8kbps modem speeds on the Neocities.org front site, and I'm not removing it until the FCC pays us for the bandwidth they've been wasting instead of doing their jobs protecting us from the "keep America's internet slow and expensive forever" lobby.' The group has published the code snippet that throttles FCC IP addresses, and they encourage other web admins to implement it."

I work for the FCC, and my opinions and statements are that of my own.

This is a waste of time.
The people you are throttling that will be effected have 0 say in what goes on here, we work the same job many engineers developers and BA's and testers do across the nation.
Also, most of our work is for services we provide to the public. Most outwards traffic is to look up commands or to mess around on facebook/reddit/slashdot.
And to be honest, im sure over 95% of the people reading this have never heard of

he seems to sign executive orders all the time, why not here? as I said if we fucked up his personal internet life (slowing down his personal internet so he and his family are screwed and asking why they cant watch netflix) im sure that pen would come out real fast

Why just government ip addresses? I think it'd be much more effective to throttle all of Comcast's address space and add a banner making it clear that Comcast is trying to double dip and get paid twice for internet they have already sold you and to be extra nice and helpful Comcast's 1-800 # for support.

You do realize that the FCC has thousands of employees. And that you just called them all dipshits, over the rules created by the FCC leadership, which was appointed and installed by various politicians...

That makes you a asshole. How about you tone down on the generalizations. I'm all for throttling the FCC, but direct the anger where it is due

It is appropriate to criticize the lowest janitor of any organization that does evil. What would the CEOs/Directors/Generals/Honchos do if they had nobody to boss? They'd shrivel up and die. Every person who works at the FCC is culpable -- same rules apply to any organized evil.

Dear God in Heaven, my kingdom for mod points. In a world with so many conflicting moral paradigms, any person on the planet has probably done evil in the sight of some other person on the planet. I'll re-state GPs logic with a few changes. "It is appropriate to criticize the lowest citizen of any country that does evil. What would the Presidents/Prime Minister's/Dictators/Generals/ do if they had nobody to boss? They'd shrivel up and die. Every person who lives in [America / The British Empire / The Roman

You do realize that the FCC has thousands of employees. And that you just called them all dipshits, over the rules created by the FCC leadership, which was appointed and installed by various politicians...

Did you choose where you currently work, or did someone pull you out of your home at gunpoint and command you to do job X?

When someone choses to work for incompetent dipshits, it doesn't really reflect well on their own level of genius.

Why should there be starvation, when we produce a huge food surplus? Why should there be homelessness, when there are something like 10 million empty houses? The reason starvation and homelessness exist is precisely so House Republicans can boss the poor around, imposing artificial scarcity to satisfy their control-freak urges.

Alright genius, where do you work for? Better yet, where do you live? Has your government done anything you're not proud of? Comitted any acts you call evil? You chose to pay taxes didn't you? Obviously choosing to give financial support to a government that does things you don't agree with makes you an evil person.

For a privately owned company that helps keep people warm in the winter. My conscience can live with that.

Has your government done anything you're not proud of? Comitted any acts you call evil? You chose to pay taxes didn't you?

No, actually, I don't. I submit to taxation only under duress, the threat of Government Guns appearing on my doorstep. I actively oppose the majority of US foreign policy, and consider the government in its current form as little more

Has your government done anything you're not proud of? Comitted any acts you call evil? You chose to pay taxes didn't you?
No, actually, I don't. I submit to taxation only under duress, the threat of Government Guns appearing on my doorstep. I actively oppose the majority of US foreign policy, and consider the government in its current form as little more than an occupying entity entirely hostile to both the constitution and the founding principles of my country.

No one is going to shoot you for not paying taxes. They may imprison you, but that's a conscious choice. Conscientious objectors have gone to prison for far less motivation than opposing an "occupying entity entirely hostile to both the constitution and the founding principles of my country."

If you genuinely believe that to be the case, financially supporting such an entity and willingly living under its rule is a far more serious act than working within the bureaucracy of the FCC.

No one is going to shoot you for not paying taxes.
And what do you suppose they do when someone refuses to peacefully submit to arrest for failure to pay their official annual extortion fee, through a barred and reinforced door?
Hint: They don't challenge you to a debate..

Sure, if you take it far enough, you could force the government to shoot you. Given the right forced circumstances could also force me to shoot you. That same power you think is the only power the government has, is ultimately the only power you have also. Taken to the ludicrous extreme, the only power you really have ultimately is the power to kill people who oppose you.

/ Fact of the day: The US made it through over half of its existence with no income tax in place except for extremely limited wartime assessments.

Also, electricity and reliable indoor plumbing. The historical circumstances of the country have no direct bearing on its current func

You do realize that the FCC has thousands of employees. And that you just called them all dipshits, over the rules created by the FCC leadership, which was appointed and installed by various politicians...

That makes you a asshole. How about you tone down on the generalizations. I'm all for throttling the FCC, but direct the anger where it is due

Given that they're a government body, I'd say that's a fair assessment.

Remember the SOPA/PIPA protests - Google actually participated in that one.I could see someone like NYtimes, Washington Post, CNN.com or other media sites briefly doing this kind of stunt. Grandpa wouldn't be affected, unless he visited their sites from FCC HQ.

Good point. I suspect that when people hear the term "cyber-terrorism", somewhere in their subconscious or unconscious, they imagine terminator-like cyborgs with bombs strapped to their chests. Or something like that.

Considering that "cyber" has been taken over to be a sexual term, they might think it is some sort of BDSM play.

Think you've got that backwards, mate. I haven't heard/seen someone use "cyber" as a sexual reference in a solid decade, whereas it seems to be the government's new favorite militaristic buzzword (cyberterrorism, cyberdefenses, cyberoffenses, cyberborders, et.al.)

Please, PLEASE do the same to the EPA. If you read the recent news, one of the staff who just got a bonus was spending most of his taxpayer-funded work hours downloading p0rn. This is a wonderful solution to that problem.

Please let me know if I'm wrong, as it's certainly possible. What the proposal allows for is that say Netflix, or Youtube, or any other content provider that would utilize a lot of bandwidth, would be allowed to purchase direct physical lines to individual large ISPs for that ISP's customers instead of sending data over the Internet backbone. The end result would be a faster connection for that provider and those end users, for ultimately less cost.

So what we're dealing with here is a content provider that adds extra bandwidth to the Internet (albeit for a specific purpose), and pays for it, for the intended purpose of saving money for all parties involved while improving the end customer experience. Can someone please tell me why this is a problem? Or am I reading it incorrectly?

I do agree that from a technical point of view, the provider is purchasing a higher tier connection from the ISP for an improvement in throughput, but this in no way impacts any other service. I can envision the standard net neutrality argument that would allow an ISP to possibly extort a content provider, although I can't imagine why they would ever want to do so, considering peering agreements favor the consumer of data. Even so, tweaking the rules to disallow the restriction of data would make more sense than forbidding a willing provider to selectively choose to improve the experience for a specific group of customers above and beyond what is currently possible through the Internet for the same cost.

While we're at it. A couple things you can do to help is sign the petition (yeah I know).
https://petitions.whitehouse.g... [whitehouse.gov]
And contract the FCC by calling 1-888-CALL-FCC (1-888-225-5322) voice or 1-888-TELL-FCC (1-888-835-5322) TTY; faxing 1-866-413-0232; or writing to:
Federal Communications Commission
Consumer and Governmental Affairs Bureau
Consumer Inquiries and Complaints Division
445 12th Street, S.W.
Washington, DC 20554
Let them know you want ISPs to be classified under Title II and that true N

I don't think the goal is to only throttle the one site, but to start a movement where websites all over the internet, including ones that those on the FCC do frequent, all do this.. so that they feel the effect.

Eh. I have to say, yes, the Ds are just as bought as the Rs. But lets get back on track here... There's a perception that the media is biased towards liberals. Ok, and I stretch to call the Ds liberals. But really. Benghazi. Over and Over and Over. Four people lost their lives, it was a tragedy, and it was a mistake... but it's NOT the story it's made out to be. The media is all in when we're talking about Benghazi though, and where's the real reporting instead of just parroting talking points?

Where were the congressional hearings when we started a war in Iraq on faulty intelligence? Four people lost their lives? Try thousands of our troops and hundreds of thousands of civilians. Where's the outcry in the media?

Our media is NOT liberal. They are corporate conglomerates, who parrot what they are told.

Snowden? Benghazi? Troops coming home in caskets? Oil spills? mines collapsing? Our media are tools, and they say what they're told to say. Liberal bias my ass. They have a corporate bias.

Can't honestly say I disagree with anything you've said here. Any apparent bias between the different 'news' agencies seems to be purely for show, and achieves nothing but furthering divisions among us.

The whole Red vs Blue thing is missing the boat completely. You can bitch about Republicans all you want, but the problem is the Rich vs. Poor and both deomocons and republicrats are pandering to the wealthy. The only real difference I see is that Republicans are a touch racist on top of everything else. Doesn't matter what side of the ticket you punch in November, we are living in a plutocracy.

True, but it matters because not everyone knows or believes that; even here on Slashdot, there's a fair amount of folks living in denial, who insist that one half of the One Party is somehow less evil/avaricious/etc than the other, by virtue of what members of that half have said. Thus, I feel it's important to point out when their actions counter their words, so maybe a fraction of the delusional who read this will realize their mistake, and stop making it.

They serve different corporations, and that is why they fight against each other. Republicans are oil and military. Democrats are internet and entertainment. Of course there is overlap, but if I had to choose, Republican would lose every time.

The one that challenges the Republican views that:money is speech, and since the rich have more money they should get to decide what speech I should listen to.

Republican view? I'm confused.

Obama, a Democrat, said, “I am in this race to tell the corporate lobbyists in Washington that their days of setting the agenda are over”.
Obama, a Democrat, appointed Tom Wheeler, former cable & wireless lobbyist, to chair the FCC.
A democrat controlled Senate confirmed Tom Wheeler as the FCC chairman.
Tom Wheeler proposes the fast lane.

If you're going to spew partisan demagoguery, at least post it on a story it applies to.

But you do throw away your vote when you vote for a third party, especially in the presidential election. Of course, you almost certainly are throwing away your vote no matter what, unless you live in a swing county.